In conventional parking equipment, in-plane moving types, vertical-elevating types, and trans-elevator mechanical parking equipment of Tada Sogood Company etc., all require a transfer system. However, the transfer systems of the prior art have limitations, for example, the plate-exchanging type, i.e. the in-plane moving type parking equipment, have a low efficiency in depositing and retrieving cars; the comb-type parking equipment requires a higher parking floor, each parking place requiring a fixed comb frame, thus increasing the cost of construction. Chinese Patent No. ZL99249841.4 discloses a transporting equipment for longitudinally depositing and retrieving cars. However, this equipment can only be moved in one direction due to its complex drive mechanism. In Chinese Patents No. ZL99244696.1 and No. ZL02263871.7, a transporting equipment for longitudinally depositing and retrieving cars is disclosed. Although this equipment can realize a bidirectional back and forth movement, it has a complex drive mechanism for clamping and placing cars and requires different mechanisms for moving the drive mechanism such as a motor, a reducing gear, a hydraulic drive station for driving clamping and placing movement and a sensing control system, all of which are placed within a narrow space of the transporting equipment, causing inconvenience to its manufacture, assembly and maintenance. Furthermore, this structure requires more steps of the clamping and placing processes as well as a complex control process, causing a longer execution time. The parking system of the prior art also has disadvantages in that it is very difficult to apply a defined mechanism to deposit or retrieve cars having various wheelbases. Therefore, they cannot meet industrial production requirements.
Generally, in the transferring process of the car and car chassis manufacture, assembly and storage, either a special production line mode for transferring work or a direct manual driving mode is adopted for the transferring step. The former mode puts a higher demand on the earlier planning stage of production equipment preparation, whereas the latter is only of low production efficiency.
In the process of transporting cars or car chassis by means of cars or containers, the loading and unloading process are mostly operated by directly driving cars or car chassis, but the space for operation is narrow and requires higher driving skills, thus causing security risks and sometimes the door cannot be opened for drivers. Moreover, the methods for clamping cars or car chassis of the prior art cannot meet the requirement for depositing and retrieving cars of different wheelbases and require a manual adjustment during the clamping, thus consuming much longer time and are unable to meet the requirement of industrial production.